Can they see me? I can’t see them. If I keep very quiet and very still, will they pass me by?

She held her breath suspended. Her muscles had locked up, rigid with the vicious desire to lurch away, to run, but she forced them to be still.

The footsteps paused in the room’s entrance. For a heartbeat Margot thought that might be it, that the dead one might look into the dark and then turn away, that she would be safe. But then the figure moved again, and it moved directly toward her.

The dark might disguise her. But it would not save her.

Margot scrambled to gain her feet. Her legs were chilled and full of pins and needles. She grit her teeth, trying to keep quiet as she moved blindly.

The entrance to the hallway had to be ahead, but she couldn’t see where. The dead thing was already drawing nearer, its heavy, unsteady footfalls becoming faster as it sensed Margot was close.

She couldn’t afford to scramble through the dark. Margot’s arm shook as she lifted it from her chest, and the phone’s flashlight sent a pale shimmer of illumination through the sleeve. It grazed over the open doorway, and Margot skirted around the furniture as she raced toward it.

Just as she reached the exit, she threw a glance behind herself. The dead one stood in the place where Margot had been sitting. Her view of it was only a microsecond long, damped by heavy darkness and disorienting stress. It was like a snapshot of the scene, blurred and barely discernible, but the image stuck behind her eyes as she slipped through the open door and, breathless and silent, raced along the hall.

It had been a woman. Tall. Age was hard to tell when the body was that distorted, but Margot thought she must be past fifty. Long hair hung about her breasts. Scraps of her old clothes draped from emaciated shoulders. Her arms were stick thin, the bones prominent lines beneath the skin, bulging out at her elbow and wrist joints.

Old, dry dirt smeared her body, clinging to her clumping, stringy hair. Her eyes were glazed white.

In the brief glimpse Margot had gained, she’d seen the hands twitch. Bulging, knotted knuckles spasmed as the too-long fingers flexed out at her side. Her mouth was pressed in a thin line, no lips visible. Black thread wove through the skin, loops of it sealing her mouth shut.

Margot kept her own mouth open, drawing air into starving lungs as silently as she could. She wanted to break into an outright sprint but forced herself to keep her pace slower. Slow enough that her thumping footsteps wouldn’t give away her location too easily.

She passed the door to the sewing room and heard Marsh drag his claws against the door, snuffling as he asked to be let out.